fundraising

HOW FUNDS WERE USED

2015 proved to be a challenging year in the fundraising space, however, in a highly competitive funding market we achieved some significant gains in our revenue streams.

In 2015, $3.13 million was raised across our six core fundraising streams (with $1.17million in direct expenditure). There were several areas that experienced high levels of growth against our 2014 results, with significant revenue increases achieved in trust and foundations (27%), challenge events (53%), donations (19%), and appeals (117%). These results were able to be achieved as a direct result of investment and innovation in the fundraising and development space.

One of the areas in which high levels of innovation and engagement were achieved was the newly formed Reach Enterprises. This brand new social enterprise model was launched in March 2014 thanks to a seed grant from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and generated $160k revenue in its first year.

The Fundraising and Development team’s focus remains to achieve Reach’s strategic priority ‘to be benefiting from and contributing to a relevant suite of partners and funders’. We will continue to build sustainability for Reach by delivering on key fundraising objectives: to maximize all opportunities to generate support for Reach’s work, allocate adequate resources and achieve set targets across the six primary revenue streams.

Our focus

• Engagement

• Stewardship

• Retention

• Recognition

• Measurement

• Innovation

WHERE FUNDS CAME FROM

INSPIRING EVENTS

THE REACH BALL – OUR 21ST BIRTHDAY

We all know that young people celebrate their birthday in a big way. A 21st Birthday is a significant marker – a traditional start in to the world of adulthood. It’s an important time to reflect on how far we’ve come, what we hope and aspire to achieve next, what we want for ourselves, and what is it that ‘success’ looks like. At a 21st birthday, family and friends traditionally share in all the excitement and it is more than often a big reason to enjoy a song and dance about who we are.

Reach met this significant milestone in 2015 and on Friday July 24th, we proudly celebrated 21 years of positively impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people. We did this by hosting almost 600 of Reach’s family and friends at Atlantic, Docklands for our annual Reach Ball.

Each year, the Reach Ball raises funds that go towards encouraging young people, not matter what their circumstances to believe they can achieve. This year we raised $100k.

THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES

On October 2nd, Reach held the grand final eve ladies lunch at Atlantic Docklands. Set on a sunny day along the harbour, the ladies lunch celebrated women and showcased our work with gender specific programs. This day had the support of over 350 guests who filled the room with laughter, dancing and connection.

One of our fresh-to-the-scene ambassadors, Jack Watts co-MC’d with one of our crew members Louisa Keck and they both spoke beautifully about Reach, our strong connection with the Melbourne Football Club, and the impact the AFL has had on Reach.

Another Reach crew member, Maddie Pearce spoke bravely of her experience with Black Saturday and her triumph over adversity.

The grand final eve ladies lunch raised over $17k in support of our gender specific programs.

THE REACH BREAKFAST

On the 13th of November 2015, corporates from around Melbourne and from interstate rose before the sun to join us at the annual Reach Breakfast. This year it was planned and delivered by two of our talented facilitators; Tom Canny and Rozi Komlos.

The theme – based on our newly released Hopes and Dreams report – was ‘Do Young People Care about ANYTHING?’. The answer was ‘yes’ and the morning’s message was outlined and emphasized by our crew and those that were brave enough to share their inspiring stories through being interviewed on the day.

Our guests walked away with the important learning that young people can often feel trapped by predetermined views of what is important to them, which can unfortunately lead to a road-block in finding out what it is that inspires them. We hope that they can use this newfound learnings to turn their dreams into realities.

Thanks to the 440 guests who joined us at Crown Palladium on the morning, $80K was raised for us to continue to support and unlock the potential of young people.

THIRD PARTY EVENTS

Reach is lucky to have the support of third party organisations, such as McLardy McShane Financial Services and The Grocery and Liquor Association (GALA).

McLardy McShane proudly supported Reach within their annual Golf Day and Christmas Lunch throughout 2015. Raising over $70,000 as well as introducing Reach to a pool of individuals amongst the insurance industries and their networks.

GALA have made an incredible contribution to Reach over the years with over $1million dollars raised since their inaugural commitment 19 years ago. In 2015 this is no different with a contribution of over $60,000 between the GALA Golf Day and the Masquerade themed GALA Ball.

GALA Golf Day was held on the 19th March at Keysborough Golf Course and GALA Ball was held on August 21st at Atlantic Docklands.

A SOLID FOUNDATION THROUGH CORPORATE SUPPORT

Since Reach was established over two decades ago, it has always enjoyed strong support from businesses, large and small. We believe this is due to our continued focus on developing and nurturing mutually beneficial corporate partnerships – inclusive of great community visibility, as well as staff engagement through events, camps, and volunteering. The consistent level of support provided by our corporate partners allows Reach to deliver a wide range of community and school based programs across Victoria and NSW.

PRINCIPAL PARTNERS

Our Principal Partners continue to set the bar high in demonstrating their support for Reach and for young Australians more broadly.

BHP Billiton’s five-year partnership with Reach – now in its 4th year – has helped us build and sustain our first permanent regional base in Australia. Located in the Hunter Region of NSW, this base is now the hub from which we deliver vital workshops to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of young people from the surrounding schools and communities.

PFD Food Services’ long-standing support continues to ensure that we can support over 8000 young people in their transition to high school each year, by delivering Rookys – our suite of primary school workshops for years five and six.

REACH CHAMPIONS

Our Reach Champions also make a huge contribution to Reach, allowing us to deliver high quality workshops to the greatest possible number of young people.

As with every year, the staff and clients of McLardy McShane went above and beyond to allow young people to attend our Fused Workshops and Weekends Away by nominating Reach as beneficiary of their annual Golf Day and Christmas Lunch events.

Through the Jim Stynes Scholarship Fund, The AFL supported three key Reach initiatives in 2015. These included our work in disadvantaged schools throughout Victoria; our crew development program through which we train our new generation of Facilitators; and our Grounded program, which seeks to re-engage young people considered ‘at risk’ with their schools and communities.

KFC NSW and KFC Victoria continue their long history of support for multiple aspects of The Reach Foundation’s work. In 2015 KFC supported Crew Development in NSW as well as Heroes Days in Victoria, our largest workshop for just under 2000 year nine students annually. Their provision of in-kind support remains critical to Reach program delivery as well – we couldn’t do it without them!

SUPPORTING PARTNERS AND REACH SUPPORTERS

Our Supporting Partners and many Reach Supporters bring their collective backing to a diverse range of Reach programs and initiatives.

In NSW, UnLtd, State Street, and the Wilson HTM Foundation supported Reach Crew Development, workshops for disadvantaged schools, and the state pilot of Thrive – The Reach Foundation’s gender based workshops – respectively.

SC Johnson was a new addition at the Reach Supporters and then Supporting Partner levels in 2015. They threw their considerable support behind both Crew Development and the running of a Fused Weekend Away in regional NSW.

NAB remains The Reach Foundation’s second largest workplace giving partner, and in 2015 supported the delivery of our Fused Program through its Community Grants Program.

TAC continued its two decade long support of Reach in 2015, by backing various capacity building initiatives aimed at increasing our ability to deliver best-practice workshops for young males.

PWC remained The Reach Foundation’s largest workplace giving partner last year and also procured a number of Reach L&D workshops for its employees.

For the second year running, we were delighted to be nominated as beneficiary of Hodges annual Golf day at Sandhurst in 2015.

Through their respective scholarship programs, both AAGE and Camp America offered unique personal and professional development opportunities to two lucky members of the Reach Crew.

COMMUNITY FUNDRAISING

Community fundraising is an inspiring income stream for Reach. It empowers our participants and school supporters - who continue to live our values of young people inspiring young people – and gives families, businesses and individuals the chance to support and learn about Reach from our amazing fundraising advocates. Throughout 2015 we saw growth in our school fundraising, exciting third-party events and dynamic activity-based fundraising – we even have a fundraiser cycling around the world for us!

We were the proud beneficiaries of events such as the peSA Conference, the Tax Institute’s Trivia Night, Nelson Alexander’s Carlton North Foundation Day, Newell Rubbermaid’s ‘Global Day of Service’, Social September, Altitude Volvo and so many more.

We are so grateful to those that organize, coordinate, donate, support, run and create on behalf of The Reach Foundation and the young people we work with.

Nelson Alexander Foundation Day

Annually, each and branch of Nelson Alexander Real Estate celebrates Foundation Day, a day focused on positively impacting the community through the sale of a property per office. The Reach Foundation was selected by Nelson Alexander Carlton North and a stunning property on the highly sought-after Canning Street was auctioned, with Nelson Alexander donating all agent fees from the sale to our Collingwood Fused program. We are privileged to have received this generous support and been a part of someone’s dream home purchase.

Newell Rubbermaid Global Day of Giving

Newell Rubbermaid have an international tradition of coming together and supporting organisations to make a difference, and for 2015 The Reach Foundation was the selection for Newell Rubbermaid Melbourne. Our fantastic facilitators Steph and Ryan started the day with a session about Reach, the impact Newell Rubbermaid will have and an encouragement to go above and beyond and they certainly did!

Through a combination of fundraisers, including a movie screening, a bake sale and a huge product sale: Newell Rubbermaid raised over $13,000 which was all directed to supporting Casey Fused. The team had a fantastic day and showed the power of the collective, and have very kindly continued to supply stationary to our programs.

Social September

This incredible initiative was founded by Reach supporterBianca Venutti as she realised the need to focus on the self amongst all of the technology we are surrounded by on a daily basis. Social September encourages us all to press pause in September – disconnect from our digital lives and reconnect with each other, and ourselves. The aim is to create spaces for face-to-face social connection, promoting positive mental health and wellbeing. In it’s forth year, Social September engaged many new participants as well as hosting its fabulous finale, an evening with Maria Venuti. The sensational cabaret show was held at Slide Lounge, who generously supported the evening. Bianca and Social September have an incredibly positive impact on society, as well as raising much needed funds to ensure that young people are able to connect. We love having this incredible month to remind us to value the people in our lives and encourage reconnection.

TRUSTS & FOUNDATIONS

NAMES OF ALL TRUSTS & FOUNDATIONS

In order of highest amount given to lowest

Perpetual Trustees

Gandel Philanthropy

The Greenlight Foundation

UnLtd. Foundation

The Jack Brockhoff Foundation

The William Angliss (Victoria) Charitable Fund

John T Reid Charitable Trusts

Brasher Family Foundation

The RE Ross Trust

The Ian Potter Foundation

Equity Trustees

The R.M. Ansett Trust

Collier Charitable Fund

Besen Family Foundation

Bell Charitable Fund

Newsboys Foundation

Matana Foundation

Portland House Foundation

Lord Mayor’s Charitable Fund

Inner North Community Foundation

Mr Paul Brasher

The Alfred & Jean Dickson Foundation

The John & Margaret Scheider Charitable Trust

Highlights

A number of trusts and foundations partnered with Reach in 2015, to provide crucial funding support for our youth programs and workshops:

• The Ian Potter Foundation partnered with Reach, over two years, to train more facilitators to deliver workshops through our Crew Development Program. We develop young people with personal, communication, facilitation and teamwork skills to become accredited Reach facilitators. Demand for our workshops continues to out-pace our ability to deliver them and this program equips more young people with the skills to be leaders in their community and future Reach workshop facilitators.

• The RE Ross Trust invested in Reach’s ‘Changing Perceptions’ program, delivered in Victoria’s Loddon Mallee region, to help young people 12-18 years old with safe and supportive spaces to work toward understanding their own potential, despite the complex issues they face in their specific communities and schools and in addition to the more common experiences of adolescence.

• Newsboys Foundation generously supported Reach to partner with Northern Bay College in Geelong to deliver 12 interactive workshops for students in years 9 and 11. The workshops were designed to engage, challenge and inspire participants and focussed on supporting personal development and encouraging young people to reflect on their choices. The content of the workshops included: self-awareness, self-management, coping with change, social awareness, relationship management, building a support network and asking for help when needed.